We describe counterfeiting activity as the issuance of private money, one which is difficult to monitor. Our approach, which amends the basic random-matching model of money in mechanism design, allows a tractable welfare analysis of currency competition. We show that it is not efficient to...

We construct a search-theoretic model where fiat money coexists with real assets, and all assets can be used as a media of exchange. The terms of trade in bilateral matches are determined by a pairwise Pareto-efficient pricing mechanism. We do not have to appeal to exogenous liquidity...

We construct a simple environment that combines a limited communication friction and a limited information friction in order to generate a role for money and intermediation. We ask whether there is any reason to expect the emergence of a banking sector (i.e., institutions that combine the...

In this paper we provide a survey of the payment literature in a unified framework. The environment is a variant of the Lagos and Wright (2005) model of monetary exchange, where some trades occur in bilateral meetings while others occur in more or less decentralized markets. We use this basic...

The 2007 Summer Workshop on Money, Banking, Payments and Finance met at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland this summer, as we have over the past several years. The following document summarizes and ties together the contributions presented at the workshop this year.